As terrified shoppers ducked for cover, a teen-ager fired at least five rounds from the upper level of a mall on Wednesday afternoon, hitting a 13-year-old girl twice in the back on the level below. The girl, whom police declined to identify, was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. She was in stable condition after the 4 p.m. shooting at the Westminster Mall. The shooter, about 17 or 18 years old, ran from the scene. He remained at large Wednesday night, police said.

When the Hawthorne Plaza shopping center opened in 1977, civic leaders hailed it as a shopper's paradise. But lately, as stores have pulled out and sales have dropped, the mall has seemed more like a developer's nightmare. Eight shops closed in early January, bringing the number of tenants down to 87. Just a few years ago, the mall had 130 stores.

So it's Jan. 2 and already you've broken a New Year's resolution or two. An important question enters your head: Is there hope? Sharon Potter, a Ventura County therapist, says yes, most definitely. "People can beat themselves up if they want to," she said, "or they can say, ' Today is the beginning of a new year too, so I can remake or re-evaluate (my resolutions).' Maybe they should look at what they really want."

YOU'VE FINALLY MADE the big decision to renovate that tired old bathroom or even to build your dream house on a hillside view lot. What do you do before you call in the architects and contractors, before you take out a second mortgage? Simple. You design it yourself. With the help of a series of home design kits from Stanley Tools called "Project Planners," even if you can't draw, you can still produce a detailed guide that will show the professionals exactly what you have in mind.

So how did Orange County's ultraconservative TV talk-show host Wally George fare during his recent live phone interview on Howard Stern's radio program to promote his memoir "Wally George: The Father of Combat TV"? George's publisher, James C. Riordan of Santa Ana-based Seven Locks Press, provides the highlights: * George confronted Stern's earlier prediction that George would die after his 1994 surgery for prostate cancer. Stern recanted. * Stern poked fun at George's stuttering problem.

When Dutton's Brentwood Book Store received "Taking the Stand," the first book to be published on Oliver North, the reprint of the Marine lieutenant colonel's congressional testimony on the Iran- contra affair sold not a copy for 10 days, according to owner Doug Dutton. By contrast, the book displayed next to it, Brandeis University ethicist Sissela Bok's "Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life," sold out, Dutton said.

Jervey Tervalon, a June graduate of the UC Irvine Program in Writing, has sold the hardback and paperback rights of his first novel, "Understand This," to William Morrow/Avon Books. Tervalon, who now lives in Pasadena, says his book is one of the few contemporary novels dealing with South-Central Los Angeles, where he grew up and taught high school for five years. The novel's main character is an 18-year-old high school student who witnesses a shooting. He is not, however, a gang member.